Information technology and church: Manuscript legacy of Athos monasteries to be digitized

On Mount Athos starts a large-scale project to digitize ancient monastic manuscripts and create for them a special Internet portal.

The contract for the digitization of ancient manuscript treasures of Mount Athos and the implementation of the project "Digital Ark" was signed by representatives of the Holy Mountain and the holding Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE).

The project envisages the creation of the infrastructure needed for its operation (technical base, computer equipment and related software to digitize, manage, and view the content), as well as the digitization of documents and manuscripts in the monastic archives and libraries of Mount Athos.

In particular, it is expected to create eight access services in the digital archives of monasteries. Also, to ensure public access to Mount Athos manuscripts it will set up a special portal in several languages, and e-library archive of the Holy Mountain. It will consist of 900,000 manuscripts, 450,000 publications, 550,000 historical archives, 146 000 items of religious art, 25,000 architectural sketches and 2 500 hours of video materials.

The purpose of the project is to ensure the preservation of manuscripts, books and documents, even if their originals, for any reason, will be perished. In addition, the digitization will make Athos manuscripts more accessible to researchers.